Open-Secrets

Tag: Eckankar

  • Planes and Dimensions of Reality

    Planes and Dimensions of Reality

    Reality is greater than the multiverse

    Are spiritual dimensions and planes of existence/reality the same, similar, different?

    Exploring and discussing the dimensions and planes of existence of the two spiritual paths i have studied.

    The map and cosmology of the Diamond Approach addresses five boundless dimensions. These dimensions are coemergent, meaning they interpenetrate each other and all of manifestation down to the tiniest particulars, visible and invisible, this world and the other worlds. These dimensions are a ‘oneness’ and only artificially separated and conceptualized to discuss the contribution of each to the experience of reality. They are:

    • The Absolute – The absolute dimension is the boundless, infinite expanse whose nature is the black mystery of the absolute. When we experience it we experience the absolute, because it is the absolute that is appearing as a dimension; whereas the absolute is not a dimension, but rather the ultimate mystery and source of all dimensions, the unmanifest true nature. Because of this differentiation it becomes ambiguous sometimes to say that the absolute is the unmanifest when we are experiencing the absolute dimension, because a boundless and infinite dimension is necessarily a manifestation. –  A. H. Almaas, The Inner Journey Home
    • The Logos – The logos is the boundless dimension of true nature that is both presence and creative dynamism. Logos refers to the fact that true nature is inherently dynamic and creative. Logos is the creative matrix of all manifestation. Logos is the manifesting dimension, but it is also all manifestation, for it manifests everything from its own substance, its own presence. –  A. H. Almaas, The Inner Journey Home
    • The Nameless – The nature of the Nameless is pure consciousness, consciousness that is conscious of consciousness, without labeling or knowing anything. There is consciousness, but there is no knowing of what is known, or what knows; there are no conceptual categories.  –  A. H. Almaas, The Pearl Beyond Price
    • The Supreme – On the level of the Supreme (the dimension of Pure Presence or Pure Being), for example, you realize that everything is a translucent Beingness. You see that it is not as though translucent Beingness is in everything or that everything exists in it, but that everything is the translucence. It is inside things, outside things, and in between them. There is no place that is not translucent Beingness. On this level of the Supreme, there is no separation between what we call appearance and reality, the form and the meaning. They are all one thing; there is a unity.  –  A. H. Almaas, Facets of Unity
    • Divine Love – Divine love is the dimension of true nature responsible for the arising of qualities, feelings, and affects in experience. It is not only light, which is consciousness, but also love. Love is the primordial feeling, the source of all affects.  –  A. H. Almaas, The Inner Journey Home

    The cosmology of Eckankar includes “lower worlds” and “higher worlds,” or planes of existence. In this post, I will only mention the higher worlds as they are nondual in nature as are the boundless dimensions discussed in the Diamond Approach.

    As you see in the partial graphic of the Worlds of Eck ( ECK (Hindi word for “one;” Sanskrit eka ) is defined as “the totality of all awareness,” “the audible life stream,” “the living power that embraces the whole universes of God;” in brief, the essence of the Divine.) each plane is a “lok.”

    Loka (world) refers to the various planes of consciousness within and beyond the mind. Lok: to see; to perceive; to shine; to acknowledge; to know. So a lok is dimension or plane of consciousness that includes attributes of awareness, radiance and knowing.

    Anami (Sanskrit) “the endless plane of God.” It signifies the idea that there is always another stage of enlightenment.

    Agam (Sanskrit) origin “Light of god”.

    Hukikat means ‘reality.”

    Alaya a Sanskrit word meaning “abode, dwelling.” In the Yogacara school of Buddhism it is usually employed in connection with the word vijñ?na (consciousness) as ?layavijñ?na (“store-house consciousness”).

    Alakh means “one which cannot be seen (perceived);” beyond identifying features.

    Atma  a Sanskrit word which means “essence, breath, soul.”

    Eckankar teaches that each plane or lok has a lord or purusha (Sanskrit) a complex concept whose meaning evolved in Vedic and Upanishadic times. Depending on source and historical timeline, it means the cosmic being or self, consciousness, and universal principle.

    Eckankar also teaches that each lord or plane creates the one below it. This is seen and understood as the cosmic current/sound morphing to a lower vibration or frequency. It is one continual current of sound/vibration but it manifests different planes or dimensions of frequencies.

    The lords of these planes can be understood as personifications of their respective frequency or “a face to the consciousness.”

    What has changed in my orientation to planes of existence and dimensions of reality over the years is a shift from “travelling to have experience” to “openness to be affected and changed.”

    All religions and spiritual teachings address dimensions or planes of existence/reality/heaven. Often one has to trace references back to original language and context to get the insight hidden in plain sight.

    In my Father’s house are many mansions.

  • Good Vibrations: In the Beginning was the WORD

    Good Vibrations: In the Beginning was the WORD

    The most open of secrets is: everything is vibration

    Of course, everything refers to the manifest, the being not the unmanifest or nonbeing.

    With that said… Yesterday, January 2, 2021, I went to my bookshelf and pulled out Volume II of The Sufi Message of Hazrat Inayat Khan. I did this because over the last 6 months more and more thoughts about planes of existence, dimensions, light & sound of reality and more have been bubbling up.

    I read this book about forty years ago. It’s been on the shelf ever since. It has the musty smell of an old book. It belongs in a library of years-gone-by. One with dark rooms, wood paneling, hushed voices and yellow incandescent bulbs like the old Theosophical Society Book Shop I used to patronize in the Capitol Hill area of Seattle, Washington.

    I spent half the day reading the book, enjoying the multitude of memories and knowledge that were called forward. As you might expect, I found much that is relevant to my present thread of experience.

    I want to share some of the wisdom in this volume, calling some attention to how it intertwines with my current thread, but has it’s origins forty years in the past – and more.

    In 1969, I had my first spiritual experience and it was a doozy. I had no clue there was anything more to life than what was in front of my eyes – I was nineteen.

    To make a long introduction short and to make the connection to this book suffice it say that I became quite involved with Eckankar, a spiritual path that touted “soul travel” as a way into the mysteries of reality. Central to soul travel is the light and sound of God or reality, the cosmic vibration underlying and generating all of manifest reality – all dimensions, phenomena, objects, experience, etc.

    It was my interest in the cosmic vibration which led me to Khan’s Volume II

    I really have no clue what will come of this nor the form it will take. I’m thinking a series of blog posts over the next few weeks which will then be shared on Facebook. We’ll see what happens.

    The Life Absolute from which has sprung all that is felt, seen, and perceived, and into which all again merges in time, is a silent, motionless and eternal life which among the Sufis is called Zat. Every motion that springs forth from his silent life is a vibration and a creator of vibrations…

    Creation begins with the activity of consciousness, which may be called vibration, and every vibration starting from its original source is the same , differing only in its tone and rhythm caused by greater or lesser degree of force behind it. – The Sufi Message of Hazrat Inayat Khan, Volume II, Part One: The Mysticism of Sound

  • Revisiting Paramahansa Yogananda

    Meditation at Song of the Morning

    On Saturday, a friend and I drove over to the Song of the Morning spiritual retreat center near Vanderbilt, Michigan for a 3-hour meditation. The retreat center is located on the Pigeon River amidst 800 acres of beautiful woods.

    Song of the Morning was founded in 1971 by Oliver Black (Yogacharaya), a disciple of Paramahansa Yogananda. (more…)

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